[1] An EPITAPH on Master VINCENT CORBET.
I have my piety too, which, could
It vent itself but as it would,
Would say as much as both have done
Before me here, the friend and son:
For I both lost a friend and father,
Of him whose bones this grave doth gather:
Dear Vincent Corbet, who so long
Had wrestled with diseases strong,
That though they did possess each limb,
Yet he broke them, ere they could him,
With the just canon of his life;
A life that knew nor noise nor strife:
But was by sweetning so his will,
All order and composure still.
His mind as pure, and neatly kept
As were his nourseries, and swept
So of uncleanness or offence,
That never came ill odour thence!
And add his actions unto these,
They were as specious as his trees.
’Tis true, he could not reprehend,
His very manners taught t’ amend,
They were so even, grave, and holy;
No stubbornness so stiff, nor folly
To licence ever was so light,
As twice to trespass in his sight;
His looks would so correct it, when
It chid the vice, yet not the men.
Much from him, I profess, I won,
And more, much more, I should have done,
But that I understood him scant:
Now I conceive him by my want;
And pray, who shall my sorrows read,
That they for me their tears will shed:
For truly, since he left to be,
I feel I’m rather dead than he.
Reader, whose life and name did e’er become
An epitaph, deserv’d a tomb:
Nor wants it here through penury or sloth,
Who makes the one, so it be first, makes both.
JONSON’S Underwoods.
[2] Reg. Prerog. Court Cant. Parker, 49.—Vincent Corbet left his
copyholds in Twickenham and Thistleworth (or Isleworth) to his wife, and
legacies to various others. See page 118.
[3] Wood’s Annals of Oxford, vol. ii. p. 312. ed. Gutch, 4to. 1796.
[4] Heylyn’s Life of Archbishop Laud, p. 68. fol. 1668.
[5] See a curious account of the proceedings on this occasion by an eye
witness, in Leyland’s Collectanea, vol. ii. 626. ed. Hearne, 1770.
[6] One of the ballads written on this occasion is (through the kindness
of my friend John Dovaston, esq.) in a manuscript in my possession,
beginning,
To Oxenford our king is gone
With all his noble peers.—&c.
[7] Miscellaneous State Papers, vol. i. 394. 4to. 1778.
[8] A William Lake, who was M. A. and a fellow of Clare Hall in 1619, had
also a ring bequeathed him by Ruggles, and might have been the author.
See Hawkins’s edition of Ignoramus. Utrum horum mavis accipe.
[9] Biographical Sketches, vol. i. p. 38.
[10] Spencer, whose college disappointments forced him from the
University. Milton is reported to have received corporal punishment
there. Dryden has left a testimony, in a prologue spoken at Oxford, much
against his own University. The incivility, not to give it a harsher
appellation, which Gray met with, is well known. That Alma Mater has not
remitted her wonted illiberality, is to be fairly presumed from a passage
in her late most poetical son, Mr. Mason:
Science there
Sat musing; and to those that loved the lore
Pointed, with mystic wand, to truths involved
In geometric symbols, scorning those
Perchance too much, who woo’d the thriftless Muse.
English Garden.
[11] See Lysons’s Environs, vol. ii. p. 148 et seq.
[12] The forwardness of the clergy to publish their labours is thus
ludicrously satyrized by Robert Burton: “Had I written divinitie
positively, there be so many bookes in that kinde, so many commentators,
treatises, pamphlets, sermons, expositions, that whole teams of oxen
cannot draw them: and had I beene as forward and ambitious as some
others, I might haply have printed a sermon at Paules Crosse, a sermon
in Saint Maries Oxon, a sermon in Christ-Church, or a sermon before the
Right Honourable, Right Reverend, a sermon before the Right Worshipful, a
sermon in Latin, in English, a sermon with a name, without, a sermon, a
sermon, &c.”
Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 15. fol. 1632.
[13] Harl. MSS. No. 7000. Cabala, p. 220. fol. 1663.
[14] On the 26th of August.
[15] It occurs, with some variations, in a scarce poetical miscellany
called Wit Restored, 8vo. 1658, the use of which, in common with many
other volumes of still greater rarity and value, I owe to the liberality
of Thomas Hill, esq.
[16] MS. Ashmole, A 37.
[17] Martis, 27 Aug. 1605. “The comedy began between nine and ten, and
ended at one; the name of it was Alba, whereof I never saw reason; it
was a pastoral, much like one which I have seen in King’s College in
Cambridge. In the acting thereof they brought in five or six men almost
naked, which were much disliked by the queen and ladies, and also many
rustical songes and dances, which made it very tedious, insomuch that if
the chancellors of bothe the Universities had not intreated his majesty
earnestly, he would have been gone before half the comedy had been
ended.” Leyland’s Collectanea, vol. ii. p. 637. edit. 1770.
Mercurii, 28 Aug. 1605. “After supper, about nine of the clock, they
began to act the tragedy of Ajax Flagellifer, _wherein the stage varied
three times_; they had all goodly antique apparell; but, for all that,
it was not so well acted by many degrees as I have seen it in Cambridge.
_The king_ was very weary before he came thither, but much more wearied
by it, and _spoke many words of dislike_.” Ibid. p. 639.
[18] Although the register of Flore, the residence of Dr. Hutton, was
preserved from an early date during the lifetime of Brydges, an early one
is not now to be found. That of Christ-Church, Oxford, is not so old as
the death of the bishop: his name is not found in that of Twickenham.
[19] Wit Restored, 8vo. 1658.
[20] Athenæ Oxon. vol. i. col. 736.
[21] Harl. Catalogue, 464. fol. 3. He appears to have conceded a
portion of the patronage attending his elevation, as in the Museum
is “Carta Ricardi Corbet episcopi Norwicensis, qua concedit Georgio
Abbot, archiepiscopo Cantuariensi, preximam advocationem, nominationem,
præsentationem, liberam dispositionem, et jus patronatus archidiaconatus
Norfolciæ, dat. 15 Maii, an. 8 R. Caroli 1.” Harl. MSS. No. 464. Fol. 3.
[22] Strafford State Papers and Dispatches, vol. i. p. 221. folio.
[23] He was author of a curious sermon, printed in 1627, 4to. under the
title of “Woe to Drunkards,” which was republished with king James’s
Counterblast, and other philippics against _tobacco_ and _coffee_;
4to. 1672. Upon the intrusion of the Book of Sports, Ward told his
congregation that “the Church of England was ready to ring changes on
religion, and that the Gospel stood on tip-toe ready to be gone.” For
these words he was suspended.
[24] Harl. MS. No. 464. fol. 13.
[25] Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, vol. ii. p. 522. fol.
[26] Notwithstanding these harsh measures, which originated with
Laud—for, to the praise of our amiable prelate, he had not a grain of
persecution in his disposition—“the Walloon company in 1637 having
undertaken to repayre and make fit the church of Little St. Maryes to
be used for God’s worship by the said congregation, and also to repayre
the yard on the northside, had a lease for forty years. Which lease hath
been renewed, and now it is the church of the French congregation.”
Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, vol. ii. 57. fol. 1739.
[27] Strype’s edition of Stowe’s Survey, book iii. page 151. edit. fol.
1720.
Perhaps his fellow-collegian Cartwright intended an immediate compliment
to Corbet in the following lines:
Two sacred things were thought, by judging souls,
Beyond the kingdom’s power, Christ-Church and Pauls,
Till by a light from heaven shewn the one
Did gain his second renovation.
Poems, 188, 8vo. 1651.
[28] Ath. Oxon. vol. i. p. 601. edit. 1721.
[29] Harl. MS. No. 750. Malcolm’s Londinum Redivivum, vol. iii. p. 80. It
occurs, also, with some difference, in Mus. Ashm. No. 1153.
[30] Reg. Prerog. Court Cant. 97. Sadler.
[31] Gomersall, in an epistle to Barten Holiday. See his poems, p. 7.
edit. 1633.
[32] Fuller’s Worthies, page 83. fol. 1662.
[33] Headley, i. 38.
[34] From hence it should seem that the edition 1647 was not published at
the time this preface was written.
[35] Robert Gomersall was entered of Christ-Church, Oxford, in 1614, at
the age of fourteen, where, in 1621, he proceeded M. A. In 1625 he took
refuge from the plague at Flore in Northamptonshire, of which the editor
of the Biographia Dramatica erroneously supposed he was rector. He was
afterwards vicar of Thorncombe in Devonshire, and died in 1646. His
poems, which are rather easy than correct, were published with Lodwick
Sforza, a tragedy, in 1633 and 1638, from which the above epistle is
transcribed.
[36] Saint Paul’s cathedral was in Corbet’s time the resort of the idle
and profligate of all classes: the author, _quisquis ille fuit_, of
“A Sixefold Politycian,” 4to. 1609. attributed to _Milton’s father_,
describes its frequenters as “superstitious idolaters of St. Paul (and
yet they never think of Paul nor any apostle) and many of them have that
famous monument in that account as Diogenes had _Jovis porticus_ in
Athens; who to them which wondered that he had no house nor corner to eat
his meat in, pointing at the gallerie or walking-place that was called
Jovis Porticus, said, that the people of Athens had builded that to his
use, as a royal mansion for him, wherein he might dine and sup, and take
his repast.
“And soe these make Paules like Euclides or Platoes school, as Diogenes
accounted it, κατατριβην, a mispending of much good labour and time,
and worthily many times meet with Diogenes’ fare, and are faithful and
frequent guests of Duke Humphray.” P. 8.
[37] This was not the first censure of sir Christopher Hatton’s
extravagant monument; as, according to Stowe, some poet had before
complained on the part of Sydney and Walsingham, that
“Philip and Francis have no tomb,
For great Christopher takes all the room.”
[38] “Coryate’s Crudities hastily gobbled up in five months travels in
France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia, Helvetia, some parts of High Germany, and
the Netherlands.” 4to. 1611. Re-printed in 3 vols. 8vo. 1776.
[39] Quia valde lutosa est Cantabrigia.
[40] Ludus per spatium 6 horarum infra.
[41] “A bushel of March dust is worth a king’s ransom.”
[42] Coll. Eman. abundat puritanis.
[43] The king entered Cambr. 7 Mar. 1614-5.
[44] Samuel Harsnett, then bp. of Chichester.
[45] Vestis indicat virum.
[46] Nethersoli Cant. orator, qui per speculum seipsum solet ornari.
[47] Orator hoc usus est vocabulo in oratione ad regem.
[48] Actores omnes fuere theologi.
[49] Ludus dicebatur “Ignoramus,” qui durabat per spatium sex horarum.
[50] Idem quod Bocardo apud Oxon.
[51] Insigniss. stultus.
[52] Paulus Tompsonus, qui nuper laesæ majest. reus ob aurum decurtat.
[53] Decorum quia Coll. est puritanorum plenum: scil. Emanuel.
[54] The former is Taylor, the celebrated water-poet: the latter, William
Fenner, a puritanical poet and pamphleteer of that period, was educated
at Pembroke-hall, Oxford. He was preferred to the rectory of Rochford, in
Essex, by the earl of Warwick. He died about 1640.
Archbishop Laud in his annual account to the king 1636, page 37, mentions
one Fenner, a principal ringleader of the Separatists, with their
conventicles, at and about Ashford in Kent.
[55] See Lodge’s Illustrations of British History, 4to. vol. iii. p. 178;
Brydges’s Peers of the Reign of James the First, vol. i.; and Winwood’s
Memorials.
[56] For this vehement attack upon the weakness of an infatuated woman,
the author must be screened under the example of Horace, Ep. 8 and 12.
[57] Henry Garnet, provincial of the order of Jesuits in England, who was
arraigned and executed at the west end of St. Paul’s, for his connivance
at, rather than for any active participation in, the Gunpowder Plot, May
3, 1605. See State Trials.
[58] Wilson’s Hist. of James I, Pa. 62. fol. 1653.
[59] Two manufacturers of almanacks and prognostics. The latter was,
however, of some note as to family, being the fifth son of sir Arthur
Hopton by Rachael, daughter of Edmund Hall, of Greatford in Lincolnshire;
nor was his fame in learning unequal to his birth. In 1604 he was entered
a gentleman commoner of Lincoln college, Oxon, and in 1607 was admitted
bachelor of arts. He was held in high estimation by Selden for his
mathematical knowledge, but died in the prime of life in the month of
Nov. 1614.
[60] Dr. Daniel Price was the eldest son of Thomas Price, vicar of
Saint Chad’s, Shrewsbury, in which borough he was born and educated.
From St. Mary Hall, Oxford, where he was entered in 1594, he removed to
Exeter college, where he took the degree of master of arts, and entered
into holy orders. He afterwards became dean and residentiary canon of
Hereford, rector of Worthyn in Shropshire, and of Lantelos in Cornwall;
for which counties, as well as that of Montgomery, he officiated as
magistrate. He was author of many works, wholly devotional, and died at
Worthyn the 23d September 1631, and was buried there in the chancel of
the church.
[61] This poem, for what reason does not appear, is printed before some
of the later editions of sir Thomas Overbury’s “Wife.”
[62] These reverend gentlemen were jesters to James the First. The name
of the former was Archibald Armstrong, of whom and of whose jests an
account may be found in Granger, vol. ii. p. 399. ed. 1775. 8vo. They are
again joined in a manuscript poem (_penes me_) by Peter Heylin, written
in derision of Barten Holiday’s play already mentioned in the life of the
bishop, of which the following are the introductory lines:
“Whoop Holyday! why then ’twill ne’er be better,
Why all the guard, that never saw more letters
Than those upon their coates; whose wit consists
In Archy’s bobs and Garret’s sawcy jests,
Deride our Christ-church scene.”
[63] Thomas Ereskine, earl of Fenton.
[64] William, earl of Pembroke, a poet himself, and an universal patron
of learning, whose character is so admirably drawn by Clarendon.
[65] The compass of a note is too confined for an account of this great
negociator and general, who fell by the jealousy of the Prince of Orange
the 13th March 1619. He was born at Amersfort, in the province of
Utrecht, was five times employed as ambassador to England and France,
and had long the command of the armies of the United Provinces. De Thou
says, “que c’étoit un homme très accrédité par les charges qu’il avoit
remplies, et par sa grande expérience dans les affaires:”—And Moreri
concludes an account of his character, and his death, which he met with
an undaunted spirit, in the following words: “Barneveldt, ayant été pris,
eut la tête tranchée à l’age de 72 ans, sous prétexte d’avoir voulu
livrer le pays aux Espagnols, quoiqu’il le niat constamment, et qu’en
effet on n’en ait trouvé aucune preuve dans ses papiers. Son crime étoit
d’avoir refusé d’entrer dans le complot, à la faveur du quel le prince
Maurice vouloit a ce qu’on dit se rendre maître des Pays Bas, et d’avoir
défendu la liberté de sa patrie avec trop de zèle.” Tom. ii. p. 78.
[66] No minister ever exerted his power with less tyranny and more
benignity than the favourite of Philip the Third: he fell “from his high
estate” by the intrigues of his son, and an ungrateful monk whom he had
raised to be confessor to the king, and who abandoned the friend that had
elevated him as soon as the smiles of sovereignty were transferred to
another. On the 4th of October 1618, he retired to his paternal estate
from the capricious favour of the court, where he passed the remainder of
his days in peace and privacy.
[67] William Burton is said, by Antony à Wood, to have been a _pretender_
to astronomy, of which he published an Ephemeris in 1655.—Edmund
Gunter, a mathematician of greater eminence, was astronomical professor
of Gresham College, and eminent for his skill in the sciences: his
publications were popular in his day. He died in Gresham College, 1626.
[68] Thomas Hariot, styled by Camden “Mathematicus Insignis,” was a
pensioner and companion of sir Walter Raleigh in his voyage to Virginia
(1584), of which upon his return he published an account. He was held in
high estimation by the earl of Northumberland, sir Thomas Aylesbury, and
others, for his mathematical knowledge, but, like his patron, Raleigh,
was a deist in religion.—Ob. 1621. See Wood’s Athenæ, vol. i. p. 460. ed.
1721.
[69] Of this popular song, which is reprinted from “Deuteromelia,”
1609, in Hawkins’s History of Music, and in Ritson’s Antient Songs, the
following is the introductory stanza:
“As it fell upon a holyday
And upon a holy-tide-a,
John Dory brought him an ambling nag
To Paris for to ride-a.”
[70] Louis the XIIIth, for no superior virtues surnamed “Le Juste.”
I have seen it somewhere observed that he chose his ministers for
extraordinary reasons: Richlieu, because he could not govern his kingdom
without him; Des Noyers, for psalm-singing; and le duc de Zuynes, for
being an expert bird-catcher.
The satire of Corbet seems to justify the remark.
He was born 1601; married Anne of Austria 1615; and died at St. Germain’s
1643.
[71] Upon a similar declaration being issued by Charles in 1633, “one
Dr. Dennison,” says lord Strafford’s garrulous correspondent, “read it
here (London), and presently after read the ten commandments; then said,
‘Dearly beloved, you have now heard the commandments of God and man: obey
which you please.’”
Strafford Papers, vol. i. 166. fol.
[72] Whalley’s Ben Jonson, vol. v. 299.
[73] Dugdale’s Baronage, vol. ii. p. 444.
[74] See his Poems, p. 1657.
[75] Howell’s Letters, p. 64. ed. 1650. This fool, _quasi_ knave, whose
surname was Armstrong, had his coat pulled over his ears, and was
discharged of his office, for indignity to archbishop Laud.
See Rushworth’s Collections, vol. ii. p. 471.
[76] This refers to a popular tract published in 1622, under that title,
in favour of the Low Countries, and for the purpose of prejudicing the
people of England against the marriage which Villiers was negotiating
when this poem was addressed to him. The negotiation was not only
disgraceful, but unsuccessful:
—αισχρον γαρ ἡμιν, και προς αισχυνη κακον.
[77] “On the 29th of May,” says sir Richard Baker, “the queen was brought
to bed of a young son, which was baptized at St. James’s on the 27th of
June, and named Charles. It is observed that at his nativity, at London,
was seen a star about noon-time: what it portended, good or ill, we leave
to the astrologers.” Baker’s Chronicle, p. 497. 1660. fol.
[78] If any one is at this time ignorant of the practice alluded to in
this line, of the sponsors at christenings giving spoons to the child
as a baptismal present, it is not the fault of the commentators on
Shakespeare, who have multiplied examples of the custom in their notes on
Henry the Eighth, vol. xv. p. 197. edit. 1803.
[79] Reg. Prerog. Court Cant. Sadler 97.
[80] Ibid. Rivers 18.
[81] Cartwright has not unhappily imitated this poem in his address “To
Mr. W. B. at the Birth of his first Child:” a few lines may be given:
I wish religion timely be
Taught him with his A B C.
I wish him good and constant health,
His father’s learning, but more wealth,
And that to use, not hoard; a purse
Open to bless, not shut to curse.
May he have many and fast friends
Meaning good will, not private ends!—&c.
Poem, p. 208. 8vo. 1651.
[82] At Aston on the Wall, in Northamptonshire, where Christopher
Middleton, as rector, accounted for the first-fruits Oct. 12th, 1612; and
was buried Feb. 5th, 1627.
[83] By the right of Dr. Leonard Hutton, a man of some note in his day,
the fellow-collegian and subsequent father-in-law of bishop Corbet.
Hutton passed from Westminster School to Christ-Church, of which he
afterwards became a canon. It was in his residence at Oxford most
probably, and not, as the editors of the Biographia Britannica have
conjectured, upon this tour, that Corbet first became acquainted with
Hutton’s daughter. By the dean and canons he was presented to the rectory
of Flore in Northamptonshire, where he accounted for the first-fruits
Aug. 6th, 1601, and to the vicarage of Weedon in the same county in 1602.
Having lived to the age of 75 years, he died the 17th of May, 1632, and
was buried in the divinity chapel of Christ Church, where a monument
remains to his memory.
[84] A note in the old copies informs us that his name was “Ned Hale.”
[85] A sergeant. Edit. 1648.
[86] These are said in the old copies to be “the ministers of Daventry;”
but as no such names occur in the list of incumbents, it is probable they
officiated for Thomas Mariat, the then vicar, who must have been very
old, as he was inducted to the living in 1560.
[87] Dod and Cleaver, thus honourably introduced to our notice, were
united by the strong ties of puritanism and authorship.
Ambo animis, ambo insignes præstantibus armis;
_Hic_ pietate prior.
The latter has fallen into oblivion, but the superior zeal of John
Dod has preserved his memory. He was born at Shottledge in Cheshire,
where his family had territorial possessions, and was educated at Jesus
College, Cambridge. “He was,” says Fuller, “by nature a witty, by
industry a learned, by grace a godly, divine.” He had good preferment
in the church, but was silenced for non-conformity, though afterwards
restored. He died and was buried at Fawesly in Northamptonshire, of which
he was vicar, Aug. 19th, 1645.
They were again joined in derision by Cartwright, in his “Chambermaid’s
Posset.”
Next Cleaver and Doddism both mixed and fine,
With five or six scruples of conscience cases.—&c.
Poems, p. 231. 8vo. 1651.
[88] In Leicestershire.
[89] A note in Tanner’s Bibliotheca Brit.-Hibernica thus relates the
indignity offered to the remains of this parent of the Reformation,
after he had been ‘quietly inurned’ during the space of forty-one years:
“Magister Johannes Wicliff Anglicus per D. Thomam Arundel. archiepiscopum
Cantuar. fuit post mortem suam excommunicatus, et postea fuit exhumatus,
et ossa ejus combusta, et cineres in aquam juxta Lutterworth projecti
fuerunt, ex mandato P. Martini V.”
[90] Parson of Heathcot, Edit. 1672. It has been observed in the
Introduction that there is no village of this name in this situation:
the copy 1648 says Parson Heathcote, which was probably the name of the
parson of Ayleston, who was their conductor.
[91] Students of Christ-Church College, Oxford, which, as well as
Whitehall, the “palace” before mentioned, was founded by Wolsey.
[92] The figure in these lines is taken from the fine church of St.
Mary’s, Nottingham, in which the long chancel and nave with the tower
in the midst resemble the object of the bishop’s metaphor. The castle
mentioned in the succeeding lines has “perished ’mid the wreck of things
that were.”
[93] Guy and Colebrand.
[94] Where David king of the Scots was kept prisoner.
[95] Which is within the Castle.
[96] Every part of Corbet’s account of Nottingham Castle corresponds so
closely with the relation of Leyland, in his Itinerary, vol. iii. p. 105,
&c., that it would be superfluous to transcribe it. See also Speed’s
Chronicle, p. 540; and Holinshed’s Chronicle, p. 349.
[97] In Nottinghame.
[98] “He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.” Proverbs
xxviii. ver. 20.
[99] Dr. Jucks.
[100] Mr. Edward Mason.—MS. 1625.
[101] “The 25th of April, 1603, being Thursday, his highnesse (James
the First) tooke his way towards New-warke upon Trent, where that night
he lodged in the Castle, being his owne house, where the aldermen of
New-warke presented his Majestie with a faire gilt cup, manifesting their
duties and loving hearts to him; which was kindly received.”
“The true Narration of his Majesty’s Journey from Edenbrough, &c.” 1603.
[102] Leister forrest.
[103] Bosworth field. Edit. 1648.
[104] From this passage we learn that Richard Burbage, the _alter
Roscius_ of Camden, was the original representative of Shakespeare’s
Richard the Third.
He was buried in the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, as Mr. Chalmers
discovered, on the 16th of March, 1618-19.
[105] The clerical profligate thus gibbeted for the example of posterity
was John Bust, inducted the 8th of April, 1611. He seems to have been a
worthy prototype of the Natta of antiquity:
Non pudet ad morem discincti vivere Nattæ?
Sed stupet hic vitio, et fibris increvit opimum
Pingue; caret culpa; nescit quid perdat, et alto
Demersus, summa rursum non bullit in unda.
Persius, iii. 31.
[106] Guyes cliff. Edit. 1648. The cliff and chapel are engraved in
Dugdale’s Warwickshire, vol. i. 274. Ed. 1730.
[107] Of the Theorbo, or Cithara bijuga, so called from its having two
necks, which appears from Kircher as well as the bishop’s poetry to have
been highly esteemed in Corbet’s time, a graphical representation may be
found in Hawkins’s History of Music, vol. iv. p. 111. 4to. 1776.
[108] Warwick Castle. Edit. 1648.
[109] Fulke Greville, lord Brooke.
[110] Arch-deacon Burton. Edit. 1648.
[111] At the signe of the Alter-stone. Edit. 1648.
[112] Which serve for troughs in the backside. Ibid.
[113] Three dames,
“Well known and like esteemed.”
“A discourse of the godly life and Christian death of Mistriss Katharine
Stubbs, who departed this life at Burton on Trent, 14th of December,”
(1592.) was written by her brother, the sanctimonious author of “The
Anatomie of Abuses.”
Anne Askew, burned in 1546 for her rigid adherence to her faith, wrote “a
balade which she sang when she was in Newgate;” printed by Bale. A long
account of her examination and subsequent martyrdom may be seen in Foxe’s
“Actes and Monuments,” vol. ii. p. 1284. edit. 1583. bl. let.
With the last I am less intimately acquainted; but I take her to be the
same “lady” of whom the favourite son of Mrs. Merrythought sings, in the
last act of “The Knight of the Burning Pestle.”
[114] It is almost superfluous to observe, that rosemary was supposed by
our forefathers to be very efficacious in strengthening the retentive
faculties; and, by being always borne at funerals, was calculated
to perpetuate the remembrance of the deceased. “Here is a strange
alteration: for, the rosemary that was washt in sweet water to set out
the bridall, is now wet in teares to furnish her burial.”—Decker’s
Wonderfull Yeare 1603.
[115] The belief that the turning of the cloak, or glove, or any garment,
solved the benighted traveller from the spell of the Fairies, is alluded
to in the Iter Boreale, (see p. 191,) and is still retained in some of
the western counties.
[116] This poem, of which the leading features seem to be copied from
the 10th epistle of the 1st book of Horace, has been printed in “The
Antient and Modern Miscellany,” by Mr. Waldron, from a manuscript in his
possession, and it is consequently retained in this edition of Corbet’s
Poems; to whose acknowledged productions it bears no resemblance, at the
same time that it is attributed (in Ashmole’s MSS., No. 38, fol. 91.) to
Robert Heyrick, the author of “Hesperides.”
[117]
Discite quam parvo liceat producere vitam,
Et quantum natura petat.
LUCAN, iv. ver. 377.
[118]
Impiger extremos currit mercator ad Indos,
Per mare pauperiem fugiens, per saxa, per ignes.
HOR. Epist. I.
[119] See Warton’s Hist. of Engl. Poetry, vol. iii. p. 170, 171.
[120] See the Life of the Bishop.
[121] This poem, which is in some manuscripts attributed to William
Stroude, has already been printed in the Topographer of my very
intelligent friend, Samuel Egerton Brydges, esq. vol. ii. p. 112.
[122] Richard Greenham was educated at Pembroke-Hall in Cambridge, and
became minister of Dry-Drayton, three miles distant; where it should
seem, from a rhyming proverb, that his success in the ministry was not
proportionate to his zeal:
Greenham had pastures green,
But sheep full lean.
“What,” says Fuller (Church Hist. lib. ix. 220.), “was Dry-Drayton but a
bushel to hide,—London an high candlestick to hold up the brightness of
his parts?” Thither he repaired; and, after an ‘erratical and planetary
life,’ settled himself at Christ-Church, where he ended his days in 1592.
“His master-piece,” says Fuller, “was in comforting wounded
consciences.”—Quid multis!
[123] “Tous les tempéramens,” say our neighbours, “ne se ressemblent
pas.” The Divine thus satyrized by Corbet is lauded by Fuller in high
strains of eulogy. He was born at Marston near Coventry, and was educated
at Christ College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of M. A. Having
obtained the living of St. Andrew’s parish in that university, he resided
there till his death.—“He would pronounce the word _damme_ with such
an emphasis,” says Fuller, (Holy State, p. 80. fol. 1652.) “as left a
doleful echo in his auditors’ ears a good while after.” This passage is
of itself a sufficient illustration of the poet. His works were published
in three volumes, folio, 1612. The first in the collection is, “A Golden
Chaine, containing the Order of the Causes of Salvation and Damnation,
&c., in the tables annexed.”
[124] Juvenal. Sat. vi.
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